Crowdfunding

The scrappy little Kickstarter sandbox, Face of Mankind, sees its journey from conception to completion as an odyssey worth sharing. That's why the team has put together a talking head documentary video that chronicles the game's development since 2001.

The video itself is long on developer and player anecdotes, although it is short on actual in-game footage (this is probably not surprising considering that the team is rebuilding the engine from scratch). If you have 15 minutes and want to see how an indie MMO is made, check out the documentary after the jump!

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Much ado has certainly been made lately about doing something "new and different" in games. Just take a look at all the options coming through Kickstarter lately; even more contenders have thrown their hats into the ring since our roundup last February. But in a large number of these cases, the new ideas are coming from developers within the gaming industry. So what would happen if a game were developed from outside the industry?

Enter TUG. Formally known as The Untitled Game, the game is the brainchild of Nerd Kingdom, a group hailing from the world of academia that happens to have intersected with gaming. Self-described as "a collaboration of video game developers, academic scientists, modders, and gamers," this group wants to move beyond just improving the way games are made "to show[ing] that such games can make us better as individuals and as a society."

I was able to catch up with one of the founders of Nerd Kingdom, Scientist and Researcher of Stuffs Peter Salinas, to talk about the game. We touched on everything from player design input to features (like player books and companions) to making an engine available for others to use. Oh, and of course, Soylent Green.

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The last time I explored ThresholdRPG, I had a blast. It was one of a batch of MUDs that I used to re-introduce myself to the ancient gaming genre, and I enjoyed its simplicity and friendly community. MUDs can seem to be very similar to each other, so in order to enjoy them, you must be able to pick out the finer details that separate them. In ThresholdRPG, I particularly enjoyed fishing, roleplay, customization, and a free-to-play model that was years ahead of its time when first released 17 years ago.

The game can be a bit odd, like any MUD. During MUD May I've discovered just how confusing many of these titles can be, but I have also grown to enjoy solving the "mystery" of each game's particular set of code-words that unlock actions. ThresholdRPG is like other MUDs and introduces players to basic commands, but once out in the world a player is on her own. The good news is that an out-of-character help chat is always available and sits right on top of the standard roleplay-enforced chat. That juxtaposition of both channels actually helps immerse me in the game, allowing me to see literally where and when I can use out-of-character speech.

I asked Michael Hartman, president and CEO of Frogdice, to talk about MUD development and branching out into other styles of gaming.

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In Nerd Kingdom's The Untitled Game (TUG), the focus is on complete freedom. One of those freedoms is the ability for anyone to make his or her own server in the form of a floating island with any rules.

Official servers are broken into two categories: Survival, where your items are not safe, and Adventure, which follows more of a traditional RPG/MMO ruleset. But in the private servers, your floating islands will be yours to do with as you please.

TUG is currently still in its Kickstarter campaign with 9 days and around $75,000 to go before the project is funded. Head on over to its Kickstarter update page to learn more about private islands and the other features found in this sandbox game.

Dota 2 celebrated the incredible sales of its world championship interactive compendium with free gifts for all players; the compendium has now sold over 266,000 units, raising the prize fund in The International to over $2,000,000 US. Third-person MOBA SMITE has recently entered the competitive tournament scene with two new weekly $1,000 tournaments. Rise of Immortals also announced its first competitive tournament since the Battle For Graxia update and revealed details of its hilariously-named ranged centaur character Murderhoof.

League of Legends revealed the new custom item set feature coming in Patch 3.7 and published a new champion spotlight video on classic ranged carry Ashe. Guardians of Middle-Earth also released its latest paid DLC character, The Mouth of Sauron, based on a character who was originally cut from the cinematic release of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Diablo III celebrated the first anniversary of its release on May 15th with anniversary livestreams and a magic-find bonus for all players. The latest patch also raised the increments in which money can be sold on the Real Money Auction House to ten million in response to massive oversupply. Path of Exile revealed details of its upcoming Patch 0.1.1.0 that will add new party loot options and other features, and Star Citizen showed off its new website with a special e-commerce section in which players can buy ships for cash.

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I was talking with a gaming buddy recently who missed the whole space sim experience in the 1990s. He's a Star Wars fan and a real-life pilot pushing 40, so it surprised me to learn that he'd never heard of Wing Commander, Freespace, X-Wing, and the like. My jaw really hit the floor as our conversation turned to current games and I began to evangelize about Star Citizen and Chris Roberts.

"Who's Chris Roberts?" he asked, with a straight face.

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Recently Nerd Kingdom promised more demonstrations of the tech behind its new TUG MMO hopeful. The company has made good with a new video that shows off the in-house engine, and lead programmer Brandon Nelson starts things off with an interesting tidbit about the game's contouring algorithm. "An algorithm like dual contouring gives us the ability to have the same quality of terrain that other games have, but not have to have them generated by level designers," Nelson explains.

There's quite a lot of additional info packed into the clip's six-minute running time, all of which you can see for yourself after the break. You can also learn more about TUG via the project's Kickstarter site.

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HEX: Shards of Fate, the MMO trading card game that we first introduced last week, is doing fairly well in its current Kickstarter campaign. How well, you ask? So far the company has raised over $600,000 of the game's $300,000 goal with 21 days still to go! That's thanks to almost 5,000 backers so far.

While these numbers are impressive one week into the campaign, it should be no surprise considering the talent working on this MMOTDG. Cryptozoic Entertainment is a veteran studio that has developed and published several other trading card and board games for The Walking Dead, Lord of the Rings, DC Comics, World of Warcraft, and more.

With the game already funded at this point, it's still worth checking out the game's reward tiers and stretch goals to see if it's something you might be interested in supporting. You have only 21 more days!

[Thanks for the tip, Sounder!]

"Imagine an experience with the action of Street Fighter inside a story and land like World of Warcraft, all blended into a fast-paced Call of Duty style arena." That's how 8 Bit Studios describes its newest MOBA Kickstarter project entitled Skara: The Blade Remains.

Skara looks to be high on the action with combat based on actual attack directions and multiplayer combos. This Kickstarter campaign has just begun, but offers some exciting rewards, including a digital copy of the game as low as the £15 tier.

Check out the project page and the informative video -- featuring some pretty sweet dev facial hair -- just after the jump.

[Thanks to Alex for the tip!]

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Last week, drama swirled around Chris Roberts' Star Citizen pseudo-MMO when he announced and then clarified that certain early crowdfunders will receive lifetime insurance on their ships once the game launches. Potential players rightfully worried that such a move could taint the economy and create a special class of characters with pay-to-win perks that place everyone else at a serious disadvantage.

MMO players are becoming inured to the idea that Kickstarting a game might land them a poster or tattoo or title or even beta access, but non-cosmetic advantages seem to rile everyone up. It's one thing when Camelot Unchained offers special chat and another altogether when it promises big-time donors their own in-game islands. Then again, without such generous Kickstarter pledges, the games might never be made for the rest of us to play at all, so maybe the trade-off is worth it.

What do you think? Does it bother you that gamers with money can buy their way into godhood before a game is even made? Are there Kickstarter perks that put you off from future MMOs?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!

Guilds are pretty much ubiquitous in MMOs -- they serve as a way to bind players together into a group. But the team behind TUG thinks that all too often guilds come about mostly so you can have a name and a chat channel all to yourself. Which is why the latest design post about the game explains that the designers want to remove that sense of artificially created communities. To strengthen that sense of forming player groups, guilds have to go.

As the post explains, too often guilds become things formed for the purpose of having a guild, placing an artificial limitation on what groups players belong to. Instead, the goal is to get players to form societies and groups organically, creating more freedom by removing arbitrary restrictions. It's an idea with a lot of promise, and as the game's Kickstarter continues you can decide if that promise is something you feel like supporting.

This time of night I've only got one thing on my mind, and that's dinner. Seriously, the Massively graveyard shift makes my stomach rumble. Fortunately Cloud Imperium is here to fill it up with some sweet, sweet Star Citizen concept art.

The main course is a trio of gorgeous images from the former colony world of Orion III. Armitage, as the world was also called, was "the site of the farthest human colony from Earth... and one of the first targets of the Vanduul menace."

After you've dined on the establishing aerial artwork, it's time for dessert in the form of some early sketches for specific planetary locations. Feast your eyes at the official Star Citizen website.

As part of its in-progress Kickstarter campaign, Face of Mankind is planning for funding beyond its original $50k goal. One of the stretch goals -- at $250k -- is to build an entirely new game engine with brand new art assets. And to help show off what we could expect with that new engine, Nexeon Technologies has released a tech demo video.

The video spotlights an interesting marriage of futuristic sci-fi structures with natural environments, without allowing one style to overcome the other. It also shows the night and day cycles, where Creative Director Marko Dieckmann explains that the contrast between the two will be much more significant than most other MMOs, allowing darkness to provide an "interesting strategy to combat."

With 23 days to go in the Kickstarter campaign, the company is currently at around the halfway mark for their 30-day goal, so we'll be watching this stretch goal with particular interest.

[Thanks to everyone who tipped us on this!]

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A couple weeks ago we introduced you to an aspiring sandbox game with a focus on exploring and building that hit Kickstarter. Titled The Untitled Game (a.k.a. TUG), the open-world venue plans on using technology and social sciences to directly involve players in the design. And after listening to community feedback, developer Nerd Kingdom has introduced three new reward tiers for backers as well as a video that spotlights design features such as crafting, companions, and more.

The new tiers offer digital beta or alpha access as well as in-game extras like tattoos on your character and a baby sabre tiger companion. Prices range from $30 to $65. Folks can also get gift packs to share that give bonus copies of the game in addition to the personal copy. Check out all the details on the latest update post. And be sure to watch the design video after the break.

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